For reasons which are usually described as having regard to the public interest, and also because of the Censorship in war-time, it is not possible to relate in any detail the interview that took place between Jimmy Burke and Captain Crouch and a certain Admiralty official, who may as well be called the Director-in-Chief of the Naval Secret Service.

This gentleman--by name Commander Fells--knew the superintendent-detective as well as any of his own immediate subordinates. Though it was by then past ten o'clock at night, they found him in his office, hard at work. Though he wore the uniform of a naval officer with the three gold stripes of his rank on either sleeve, his was the pale careworn face of a man who works at a desk--moreover, for long hours of the night.

Etheridge stayed no longer than was necessary to introduce Crouch and Jimmy, and to explain the important business upon which they desired to see Commander Fells. The detective then took his departure in haste on being told that the enormous Rolls-Royce car for which he had telephoned to Scotland Yard was waiting for him in Whitehall, outside the iron gates that guard the entrance of the Admiralty.

Alone with his visitors, the Commander lay back in his chair, and closing one eye, looked hard at Jimmy with the other. A little later, he twisted round sideways, so that his elbow rested on the back of the chair--a position that enabled him with comfort to bite the end of his thumb--a habit not to be encouraged in those who are still at school, but excusable no doubt (for the sake of Empire) in Commander Fells. A singular thing in this man, who was undoubtedly one of the powers-that-be in the Navy, was that he wore no medal ribbons on the left side of his coat, the sole decoration with which he had ever been honoured being the plain blue medal of the Royal Humane Society for saving life at sea.

There were a great many things he wanted to know. His method was quite different from that of the Scotland Yard detective who had cross-examined the two witnesses earlier in the evening. Whereas Etheridge asked an infinity of questions, the Commander simply requested Jimmy, and then Captain Crouch, to tell him all they knew. When he had heard both stories, had seen a copy of the cypher message, and turned up von Essling's name in a Prussian Court directory, he got to his feet and walked quickly out of the room. He returned in about an hour, saying that he had talked the matter out with an exceedingly high official (whom it would not be possible to mention). He asked a few more questions concerning Rosencrantz, and Rudolf Stork, and then turned to Crouch.

"You must understand," said he, "that in a matter like this absolute secrecy is necessary. From the moment you leave this building, you are not to breathe a single word of what you know to any one. For all that, we are exceedingly grateful for the information you and your young friend have brought."

"The Grand Fleet, sir, will be warned?" asked Crouch.

The Commander bowed his head.

"That has been done already," said he. "Five minutes after I left you--that is to say an hour ago--Sir John Jellicoe was made acquainted with the possibilities of the raid. Torpedo-boat-destroyers were warned to keep a sharp look-out for German submarines in the vicinity of the Well-bank light-ship. You say that this man Stork means to put to sea in a smack called the 'Marigold'?"

"That's so," said Crouch. "And if you have no objection, I should like to make a suggestion?"

"By all means," said the other.

"I may not look it," Crouch went on, "but I'm a sea-faring man by trade, though I have spent half my life knocking about on land. At one time--when I was little more than a boy--I went to sea on a trawler. I know the North Sea as well as any smacksman, and it so happens that the part I know best is this same Well-bank, where the U93 is supposed to be. And now, sir, here's the point; I've an old score to pay with Rudolf Stork; he's fooled me twice already, and if ever he does it again, this foot of mine's not cork. I know every fathom of the Dogger Bank, and I ask nothing better than leave to go to sea, and run down the 'Marigold.'"

"Good!" exclaimed the Commander, slapping Crouch on the back, "you shall have your wish and a 'permit' to see you through. It's hardly likely that we should stand in your way when you want to do no more than help us."

Though the one was an officer in the Royal Navy and the other no more than an honest merchant captain, there is--as we have said before--a kind of bond that binds all men together who learn to read the face of Nature in the changing aspects of the sea. As the oceans are wide and the seas many, so do all sailors who leave port under the red or the white ensign belong to a great brotherhood that lives one life, whether it be in ward-room, in gun-room, or in stokehold, that runs the same risks and faces the same cold and tragic death, for the honour and good name of that same old England that centuries ago ousted the Don from the Spanish Main and carried the British flag from Pole to Pole. There was this in common--though they never thought it--between Captain Crouch and Commander Fells, R.N.

It was long after midnight when Crouch and Jimmy Burke left the Admiralty. By then, they had received the most minute instructions as to what they were to do; they had also been supplied with a certain amount of money from the Secret Service funds, as well as a railway warrant and a roll of Admiralty charts.

Before daybreak they were travelling northward. In undisputed possession of a first-class carriage, they made themselves as comfortable as they could, and having been assured by the guard that he would wake them up before they reached their destination, they were soon fast asleep.

Captain Crouch was able to sleep like a dog. All his life he had been accustomed to drop off whenever he wished to, for an hour or so, or sometimes only for a few minutes at a time. It was probably because of this that he had retained well into middle age much of the vitality and enthusiasm of youth. In spite of the fact that his hair was touched with grey and inclined to thinness on the crown, in spite of all the hardships and privations he had undergone, Crouch, for all practical purposes, may be regarded as a young man. He now gave an exhibition of the extreme simplicity of going to sleep at will. He took off his coat--which he rolled round his white bowler hat--in order to make a pillow--wrapped himself in a tartan rug he had bought that afternoon, curled himself up like a hedgehog, wished Jimmy good-night, and a moment later was snoring like a pig.

Jimmy's case was altogether different. Young though he was, he found that on such an occasion as this sleep was no easy matter. Unlike the little sea-captain, his had not been a life of adventure and excitement. Never in his wildest dreams had he thought it possible that he personally would take part in so tremendous an undertaking.

The whole thing was amazing. The Scotland Yard detective had appeared to have little or no doubt that "Valentine" was the Baron von Essling himself. It was, indeed, quite possible. Von Essling had told Rosencrantz that, in all probability, he would visit England, and he may have done so at the time of the outbreak of war. Also, there was nothing to prevent him repeating his visits, disguised and under an assumed name, as often as he liked. In these days of quick travelling, the journey across the Atlantic seldom occupies longer than seven days.

The secrecy with which the whole plot had been laid, and the care with which every detail had been considered, spoke volumes for German efficiency and organization. No one in London--least of all in the Edgware Road itself--had thought for a moment that the large block of untenanted flats had been purchased outright by the German Government, in order to be used as the headquarters of a gang of spies. The military attachÉ went about his business in Washington, the capital of the United States, and no shred of suspicion rested upon himself. Nothing had been overlooked. German agents had been found in Hull; and a fishing smack, the "Marigold," was able to put out from an English port and patrol the high seas on behalf of the German Navy, which dared not show its face within range of the great fifteen-inch guns of the British super-Dreadnoughts. Stork had been specially selected for work of a singularly dangerous character, and there was little doubt that his services would prove of inestimable value to those who controlled the destiny of the most formidable nation in arms that any country has ever been called upon to face. But, perhaps, the most remarkable thing of all was that the whole plot should have been discovered as it seemed by a mere stroke of luck. Had it not been for the particular gust of wind--a little eddy in the air, in mid-Atlantic, hundreds of miles from the nearest land--that blew Stork's cypher message back upon the deck, nothing would have been found out, and the Secret Service Department in the Wilhelmstrasse of Berlin would have been able to carry out their plans unimpeded.

It was such thoughts as these that kept Jimmy Burke awake. And when, at last, he fell asleep, it was to dream in a vague disjointed way of Rosencrantz and Rudolf Stork, the thunder of the "Dresden's" guns, and the silent, shadowy form of the U93, gliding northward to the fog-soaked Dogger Bank.

How long he had actually been asleep he never had the least idea, when the door of the railway carriage was thrown open, and the guard seized both Crouch and Jimmy by the shoulders and shook them to wake them up.

"Here you are, sir! This is Hull."

Jimmy sat up and rubbed his eyes. It was broad daylight and bitterly cold. The few passengers and railway servants that were to be seen upon the platform were all enwrapped in mufflers and overcoats.

Crouch sprang to his feet, cast aside his tartan rug, and jammed his battered white bowler on to the back of his head.

"Come on!" he cried. "If Stork's here, there's no time to lose."